That's good on you. And yet, obviously, not what is happening on average with crypto mining.

You are certainly right. However I am under the assumption that you only mine where electricity is cheap. If you are not stealing it, there is only nuclear, wind, water and sun produced energy left => Miners are kind of forced to use environment friendly energy.

It's better for the environment if we build expensive cables to send that power to areas still emitting CO2, instead of selling it cheaply to miners. At least up to some pretty large distance.

There's a case to be made for using the spikes of solar power to run miners, on a grid dominated by renewables, but that requires the economics to work out just right with very cheap silicon that can sit idle a big majority of the time.

Yes, germany is already doing that with electric cars. I have a Wallbox in our garage, with seperate electric because it is sadly 300 meters away from our house. So I can't use our solar. However this connection is terminated via GSM when many people are using the grid. This is usually around morning and evening. If the grid isn't exhausted they will turn the electricity back on. I really like this approach. It works well.

It would be nice, if this would be mandatory for big official mining operations. Pretty sure they would just move somewhere else but still.

Unless your “new heating system” is a euphemism for a gpu array, you’re being pretty dishonest here.

Mining takes energy that is likely created by fossil fuel, that would otherwise be used to some necessary purposes, and burns it.

Unless you are generating green energy yourself, you’re likely hurting the environment.

I’m not saying you need to stop, and I’m not saying mining rigs are the end of the world (lord knows at least they aren’t frivolous airline flights), I’m just saying the previous poster isn’t being rude… it’s a valid point.

I was under the impression that when they said "This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid", it implied that they are generating their own electricity to use for this, most likely from solar panels.

This is an assumption though, they could be running a large diesel generator for all we know.

Yes, what you are impling is correct. Forgot to mention that we have a 8kw solar system on our roof.

I updated my comment.

You should also go burn entire forests for energy and then invest the profits to plant forests to restore what you just did.

Dont want to be snarky, but thats the summary of what you just said.

I forgot to mention that I only use solar energy from our roof. I updated my comment. Wrote the initial comment in a rush. Sorry for that.

So no, I only use overproduction to mine and only a fraction of it. Everything else goes back into the grid.

Please keep conversation productive on HN, thank you.

Pointing out the absurdity of someone's position via an apt analogy seems productive to me. Certainly more so than dismissive cries to hn guidelines.

When someone says

> Dont want to be snarky, but...

it's a bit like saying "no pun intended" right before intentionally saying a pun. It is literally easier to just make the point.

I didn't mean to be rude.

I think anyone involved in a PoW system (holding, mining, spending) is legitimising wasting energy. Even if you're using a sustainable source, others aren't, and the power you're using could have been used elsewhere.

Your personal impact might have been small, but it still takes serious compartmentalization or blissful ignorance to be involved in crypto and profess care for the environment.

are you connected to the grid? if so, not mining would resell that power back to the grid. I'm honestly more interested if you're off grid